The love of contradiction: The power of paradox

Last week I spent some time in London. It was wonderful to get away and visit a few sights and sounds. It was a time of contrast, you might even say contradiction. On the Tuesday Sue and I set off to the Victoria and Albert Museum of Art and Design, the aim was to see the Frida Kahlo exhibit “Making Herself Up”. We travelled through the hustle and bustle of the city as people went about the business. As we got off the tube we noticed a couple of women who were obviously going to the exhibit, they looked and dressed just like Kahlo. It was a beautiful exhibit using her work and her unique style of dress to tell her moving and remarkable life story. In many ways her whole persona was a work of art, making the most of who she was and her struggles both physical and, emotional, identity and political. A life of contrast and in some ways contradiction. I found it deeply moving. Beautiful actually.

After leaving the exhibition we spent some time enjoying some of the beautiful gardens in and around the V and A, particularly Kensington Gardens. Sue taught me about the different flowers and how well they go together. We also observed the rich variety of people going about their lives. We had a lot of fun just goofing around before heading towards Highbury to watch Lukas Nelson in concert. Another wonderful night. Lukas is the son of country music legend Willie Nelson and his music was a mixture of so many styles. You could hear an eclectic mix of influence in his music. It made me think of the all the great artists he must have met growing up as the son of Willie Nelson.

It contrasted beautifully with the Kahlo exhibition and yet at the same time complimented it. They were both influenced by their upbringing, Kahlo had a German father and Mexican mother and was influenced by the communist revolution of her time, she rejected her Catholic faith and yet her art and her life were obviously influenced the deep spirituality of her ethnically Mexican roots and of course the physical difficulties she struggled with all her life. Nelson’s joy and abandon in his music was just a beautiful spiritual experience. I particularly loved a new song of his in which he suggested that we turn off the news and stop getting wrapped up in the negative aspects of life and go plant a garden or create a family and bring some love and beauty into the world. A sentiment that rang in my ears over the next few days as I became overly absorbed in the troubles of Brexit and the insane visit of Donald Trump both here and all over Europe. I cannot change the world I cannot stop the pain of life, whether personal or global, but I can do something positive and loving in this world. I can create some love and beauty. Something we can all do.

I learnt once again last week that if I want to know life’s beauty all I have to do is be involved in creating it. By merely creating beauty I know beauty I come a part of life’s beauty.

My word what a week of contrast…and contradiction…

Barry Lopez said in “The Big Questions” by Lama Surya Das

“One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once, life would collapse. There are simply no definitive answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light.”

I do love people, even when they irritate me. The thing I love the most is perhaps how contradictory we can all be. People constantly surprise me in loves and dislikes, none can ever be put perfectly in a box. It is the same with life really, it is full of contrast and contradiction.

Now the area where life’s contradictory nature is clearer than anything is in the spiritual aspects of life and living. At the core I have discovered is contrast, contradiction and paradox. Religion and spirituality is not common sense, it is by contrast uncommon sense. You cannot put it in a box and seal it, it is unbound, but then so is life. Our lives, like Frida Kahlo’s, if we are going to truly live spiritually alive ought to be works of art. We are here to create love and beauty, to plant a garden, to make a family, to create Beloved Community.

The world’s religious and spiritual traditions are no stranger to paradox. Taoism is full, or do I mean empty, of them. Here is one example:

Fullness and emptiness give birth to each other.
Difficult and easy complete each other.
Long and short shape each other.
Tones and voice harmonize with each other.
Front and back follow each other.
Therefore wherever the sage is, he dwells among affairs by not doing.
He teaches without words.
The ten-thousand things arise, but he doesn’t impel them.
He gives birth, but he doesn’t possess.
He acts, but he doesn’t rely on what he has done.
He has successes, but he doesn’t claim credit.
So by not claiming credit, he is never empty.

The teachings of Jesus are firmly grounded in paradox. He said “the first shall be last”; “empty yourself and be filled”; “lose yourself and be found” The epistle Paul wrote “As dying, and, behold, we live”; he said of his fellow Christians “As sorrowful, yet always rejoicing, as poor, yet making many rich, as having nothing, and yet possessing all things.”; and he said of himself “When I am weak, then I am strong”

Aristotle saw this as absolute twaddle of course. He is the great grandfather of scientific methodology, of all who pride themselves on their critical faculties and all who claim rationality. He talked of the law of the excluded middle. Put simply something cannot be both hot and cold at the same time. How can anyone argue with such logic? We cannot be rich if we are poor; we cannot be first if we are last; we cannot experience joy if our lives are full of sorrow.

Is he correct? Well he sounds like he is making sense.

Yet the religious sages seem to disagree. They speak an uncommon sense it seems.

How on earth can we receive when we are giving? It does not seem to make sense, when we think logically. Life though is not pure logic, we are more than the sum of our parts. Just look at a garden. It is made up of many and varied flowers, each uniquely beautiful but who come alive as they blend together, they are far more than the sum of their parts. It is the same with our lives that are made up moments but that are made beautiful by the meaning that emerges from these moments, good and bad and oh so beautiful.

Of course a paradox does not make sense in a purely logical sense, it is in its essence uncommon sense, but to expect it to do so is to fail to understand its purpose. It is the tool that broadens the framework in which we see reality. It stretches the boundaries of truth. Through our imaginations we push truth past its seeming limits. Without imagination, without foresight we would probably never have come down from the trees, or out of the caves. A paradox cannot be solved by conventional truths, it requires unconventional truths. It stretches common sense to the point where it becomes uncommon sense and thus moves our experiences of life forward. It challenges the status quo and the understanding of any given time. This is of course what the great religious sages did, they brought new understanding to their time and place.

Here’s a little wisdom on the paradoxical nature of spiritual living by the Sufi mystic Kabir. It is taken from “Songs of Kabir: A Fifteenth Century Sufi Literary Classic” by Rabindranath Tagore

"I am neither pious nor ungodly,
I live neither by law nor by sense,
I am neither a speaker nor hearer,
I am neither a servant nor master,
I am neither bond nor free,
I am neither detached nor attached.
I am far from none: I am near to none.
I shall go neither to hell nor to heaven.
I do all works; yet I am apart from all works.
Few comprehend my meaning: he who
can comprehend it, he sits unmoved.
Kabir seeks neither to establish nor to destroy.”

Our lives are riddled with paradoxes. How often have we heard the following statements? “I am surrounded by people and yet I am lonely” “My life is so full of choices, that I can’t make a decision about anything” or on the more optimistic end of the scale “I am skint and yet I am happy” or “I have so much, because I have so little”

The wisdom of paradox challenges our desire for certainty and perfection. The only thing that I know for certain is that my body will not last forever. We humans though do not like to believe this we like to think that we are all powerful and all knowable. We are mortal we are not God. The book “The Spirituality of Imperfection” by Ernest Kurtz & Katherine Ketcham, which was based around the authors work with alcoholics recognises that our attempts to achieve perfection have been our most tragic mistake. It highlights that one of the central theme of the spiritual traditions is the insistence that honesty, particularly honesty with self about self, is an essential requirement for any religious quest; that the greatest and most insidious dishonesty is to deny or refuse to accept our mixed human nature. We are not saints, nor are we sinners. We possess qualities of great goodness as well as the capacity to do great evil within us. We are beautiful balls of contradiction, made up of all kinds of thoughts and emotions and yet somehow far more than the sum of our beautiful parts.

So what I am trying to say is that we need to learn to not only accept but glory in life’s messiness. Let’s not get bogged down in worries and concerns, well not too much. I’m not saying we merely passive accept things, no not at all. Let us instead make something beautiful from life’s contradictions and paradoxes, let’s become artists of our lives. Let’s form something beautiful from our hearts, grow a garden, a family or a community, let’s live by this beautiful and sadly a little too uncommon sense.

The Strange Arithmetic of Christmas

The following reflection has been growing in my heart and soul for a couple of weeks now and has inspired my own little relfection that follows...

"The Strange Arithmetic of Christmas” by Jeremiah Jenkins

I deliberately requested your minister to allow me to write to you about Christmas. I was a teacher of arithmetic for fifteen years in a preparatory school, so I want to write about the inverted arithmetic of Christmas.

Christmas differs from figures and sums and dollars and crowds-at-a football game. You can add these together and get more. But with Christmas, you can add all the Santa Clauses on earth and there is still only one Santa Claus. Or all the trees and there is still only one Tree. Or perhaps all the births of children but there is still only one Bethlehem story. Or all the families, and there is still one family – yours!

It is when you start dividing Christmas that it begins to grow. It multiplies with division. It defies the rules. If you have six TV sets and give two or three away, you have less. But when it comes to the richness of love, the currency of gratitude or the document of faith, the more you give the more you possess. To teach is to learn. To encourage someone and give them your faith is to strengthen your own faith. To love is to know love.

Christmas is like a lot of things; it can be misused. I think it was never meant for raucous public displays. Its carols were not intended to be blared into the streets. Its colors probably were not meant to be emblazoned like advertising – or even associated with advertising. Christmas is the artistry of the world; it is the subtle touch, the gentle word, the endearing act, the loving gift. Share these qualities, divide them, and you will find miraculously that they have grown with division. This is the strange arithmetic of Christmas.

"The Strange Arithmetic of Christmas" I've been thinking about this for quite some time now, it has been growing, nay multiplying in my heart an soul...

Social media is full of quotations and Meme’s proclaiming little bits of wisdom. Some make sense to me, others do not. Many seem to contradict one another and depending on my mood, or the status of my soul, I can find myself agreeing and disagreeing with them. The one thing that is consistent about me is my very inconsistency. Or maybe the truth is that contradictions are true, depending on certain aspects of our humanity; two opposing truths can actually be true, depending on what parts of our our lives they are speaking of.

I recently came across the following quotation from that great medieval heretical mystic Meister Eckhart:

“God is not found in the soul by adding anything, but by a process of subtraction.”

It instantly brought to my mind “The Strange Arithmetic of Christmas.” Particularly the following sentences:

"It is when you start dividing Christmas that it begins to grow. It multiplies with division. It defies the rules. If you have six TV sets and give two or three away, you have less. But when it comes to the richness of love, the currency of gratitude or the document of faith, the more you give the more you possess. To teach is to learn. To encourage someone and give them your faith is to strengthen your own faith. To love is to know love…”

“…Christmas is the artistry of the world; it is the subtle touch, the gentle word, the endearing act, the loving gift. Share these qualities, divide them, and you will find miraculously that they have grown with division. This is the strange arithmetic of Christmas.”

Gosh I love this…What beautiful un-common sense!!! Makes sense to me…

Now before I continue an apology. I’m talking here about a subject I cannot claim to be an expert in, mathematics. I say this although I was a champion at mental arithmetic at primary school, my cousin told me it was because I was the most mental in my school. She may well be right. Arithmetic wasn’t a problem for me, it was mathematics I just couldn’t fathom, algebra and trigonometry etc. just made no sense at all to my brain.

So apologies if what I write is difficult to make sense of. This is because what I am attempting to share is un-commonsense. What I have come to believe is that what we lack today is not really common sense, we have perhaps too much of that. What I believe we need more of is the un-commonsense that lies at the heart of everything. What I’m attempting to share with you is, what I have come to believe, a beautiful and essential paradox. It is the true gift at the heart of the spirit of the season, the strange arithmetic of Christmas. How the spiritual life does indeed defy the perceived laws of nature as we understand them. How by giving away a particular commodity not only does the person receiving gain, but so does the giver and all who are caught up in this activity. You see what I have learnt, what the strange arithmetic of Christmas has taught me, is that the more love you give away the more love you experience. In fact if you want to fill the cup of love, that you hold in your heart, the first thing you must do is empty it and pour it out on all who you share this world with you.

Unfortunately many of us lack the courage, the heart, to empty our cups…

Through living spiritually I have leant that it is through the process of subtraction, rather than addition, that my soul grows and it is through division rather than multiplication that my heart is filled.

This to me is the heart of Christmas, this giving from the heart to others. This is the key message of Christianity as I see it, self-giving love. By the way I am not suggesting that it is unique to Christianity. I find it at the heart of all the faith traditions I have come to know too.

Self-giving love is a love that grows the more that we give it away. A love that is at the core of each and every one of us if we would but nurture it in the mangers of our own hearts and give birth to it in our living and breathing.

This is what Christmas means to me and why as the years have gone by I have come to believe in Christmas more and more.

I believe in Christmas, the soul of Christmas, the spirit of Christmas, the heart of Christmas the religion of Christmas more today than I ever did at any moment in my life. Today I believe everything about Christmas and a whole lot more than everything that we think we know.

Now don’t get me wrong here I am not suggesting that I believe that everything that the Gospel accounts recounted actually happened. I really can’t answer that, I wasn’t there. Were any of us who argue about it actually there? No of course not. What I mean when I say I believe in Christmas more today than I have ever done before is that I believe in the universal mythos that lies in the soul of the story. I believe in the story and what it has to teach humanity regardless of time and or space.

I also believe we need Christmas more today than at any other time before, for we mock the bells at Christmas time probably more today than we ever did before. The problem I suspect is that we do not hear the message at the heart of Christmas…Maybe we have forgotten how to listen or perhaps we have forgotten how to deliver the message.

So how do we hear the message of Christmas and perhaps most importantly how do we ourselves become Father Christmas, become Santa Claus, how do we deliver Christmas ourselves into everyone’s home?

Well here is where the contradiction comes in. We need both emptiness and fullness. We need clarity of mind and abundance of love. We need an empty mind and a full heart; we need both an empty cup and at the same time one that is full to overflowing. Now this probably doesn’t sound like sense to most, but then Christmas isn’t about common sense it is about un-common sense.

I will try to explain what I mean, beginning with the following story:

There is a story of a university professor who visited a Japanese master to inquire about Zen. The professor began to ask questions while the master just sat quietly, listening. After a while the master began to pour tea into the professor’s cup. The cup soon filled up, but the master did not stop pouring. The tea soon began to spill over on to the table. Initially the professor just sat there in stunned silence, he did not know what to do. Eventually he could take no more and shouted out “It’s overfull. No more will go in!” The master stopped pouring and simply said “Like this cup you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?”

To bring this spirit of Christmas to life in our lives requires a certain kind of emptiness. A certain kind of stillness. We need this to hear the still small voice, to hear the angels calling, to be like little children to learn all that this season has to offer us. You see the problem for so many of us is that we think that we know so much, we think we are so clever, but all we have done is killed the spirit of the season. Our so called common sense, our rejection of the spirit of the season, “our glad tidings of reason and fact, reason and fact, glad tidings of reason and fact” has filled our minds to overflowing and as a result there is no room for the spirit of the season.

We also live such busy and full lives, that paradoxically can feel so empty. We never seem to have a minute to simply be still and to feel the season. To truly know the spirit of the season we need time for silence and stillness, we need spiritual practice. We need time for prayer and meditation, a time to empty the mind so as to hear the cries of those in need and the songs of the angels and to let the love present in all of us to fill our hearts.

We need to empty our minds so that we can once again begin to fill our hearts.

And how do we fill our hearts? Well it’s quite simple really. We become like Father Christmas, like Santa Claus. We fill our hearts, like his sacks and stockings, by giving our hearts away. By practising this strange arithmetic of Christmas. We multiply by division. By giving our hearts away we receive all the love and a whole lot more than we could ever wish for. Of course we cannot measure this in the way that we can measure other commodities of life, except through our own lived human experiences. This is the strange paradox of giving though, the strange arithmetic of love that multiplies by division. It can only be measured by taking the time to reflect on our own lived experience and this requires stillness and silence.

This is how we deliver the gift at the heart of Christmas. This is how we bring the spirit to life not only for a day, or even a season, but for the rest of our lives. It is quite simple really, but it aint easy. It requires courage, it requires heart, it requires us to truly live from our hearts and to go against the grain of conventional truth. It requires that most priceless of commodities un-common sense.

It requires us to still ourselves in silence so as to hear the call of Christmas, isn’t that what this time of Advent, of preparation is about. To make ready those mangers in our own hearts and then to simply fill our hearts with the love we have been yearning for, by pouring out that love on all we share our lives with.

In so doing we will bring the spirit, the heart of the season to life. Christ will truly be born again. Love will be incarnated in and through our very lives…

For when our hearts are opened Christ is born again…

A ship of love

Every Sunday Morning before beginning worship at Dunham Road I like to look up at the ceiling above me. Have any of you been to Dunham Road Chapel? It is so beautiful. There is so much that you can feast your eyes on, without anything being in your face. Before I begin leading worship I like to look up and offer a prayer; a prayer to remind me of why I am there; a prayer to remind me of what I believe the purpose of worship is; a prayer to remind me of what spiritual community is about; a prayer to remind me of what the purpose of religion truly is. As I look up I feel like I am standing beneath the hull of a great ship. Yes ok it’s one turned upside down. I’m cool with that as I’m someone who is always searching for the un-commonsense as opposed to the commonsense that I am told I should be seeking. Commonsense is so overrated, where as un-commonsense is so rarely absorbed. 

As I look up at the ceiling I feel Like I’m dangling down towards the bottom of a great ship and when I then look up at the congregation I feel like we are all in this ship together. We are sailing in this ship together. We do not sail the ship alone. We are fellows in the same ship; we are journeying in a fellowship. I do not see it as an Ark though, more a cruise ship really, maybe it could be called a love boat. It is a fellowship of love, a fellowship of the spirit even. Each week we journey together. Ok I may well steer the ship, but I am not the navigator. After our weekly adventure, on our love boat, we go back out into the world, we go our separate ways and hopefully carry that spirit into our daily lives and into our world; to attempt to share some of this uncommon sense in our own little worlds. We go our separate ways, but are united in that spirit of love we have shared in our time together.

Holy Fools: Uncommon Sense

The blog below was originally published on "April Fools Day" 2012, when it fell on the same day as "Palm Sunday"...

“Life is too serious to be taken too seriously”  I can’t really remember where I was when this first dawned on me or who first said it to me, or where I first heard it. It is though a line that keeps on re-emerging into my consciousness. “Life is too serious to be taken too seriously”.

I suspect it originates from that great Victorian wit Oscar Wilde who said “Life is too important to be taken seriously”. Maybe, maybe not. I know that they are words that I keep on remembering.

Today is Palm Sunday, but it is also the 1^st of April, “April Fools Day”. I am sure that we’ve all fallen for April fools Jokes over the years. I think the most famous one must be the Panorama "Spaghetti Tree Hoax" of 1957. The program showed images of spaghetti growing on trees. Pasta was a not a popular dish in those days and apparently hundreds of viewers phoned the BBC as a result asking how they could grow their own spaghetti. Many years later CNN described the broadcast as “The biggest hoax that any reputable news establishment ever pulled.”

No one is really sure of the origins of April Fool’s Day. There are references made to it in Jeffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, written in the 14^th century and there are festival of fools that can be found throughout most cultures dating back to ancient times. I suspect that the modern day custom has its origins in sixteenth century France. In 1564, under the reign of Charles IX, the Gregorian Calendar was adopted. Prior to this date New Year had been celebrated, with the giving of gifts, on the vernal Equinox on March 21^st. New Year now fell on 1^st of January. People were now expected to give gifts on New Year’s day and they also began to give mock gifts on 1^st April. It seemed that many folk resisted the change and those who persisted with the old ways were victimised and had pranks played on them. These people became known as an “April Fish”. April Fish are pinned on people's backs to this day, on April 1st.

There is great wisdom in folly. The fool can reveal deeper truths that common wisdom appears blind to. Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians chapter 3 v 18 makes reference to the wise fool. He said “Do not deceive yourselves. If you think that you are wise in this age, you should become fools so that you may become wise.” Every culture, throughout human history, has a version of the “Holy Fool” The fool fulfils a vital role , he counteracts human arrogance and pomposity, he protects humanity from hubris. He breaks down the order of things and his crazy outspoken talk questions what is regarded as common sense; he reveals a new kind of sense, an uncommon sense. His unconventional appearance exposes the pride and vanity of those around him and his seeming foolhardy loyalty and love of hopeless causes undercuts the self interest of those who possess power. That said this does make him vulnerable and at the mercy of those who hold power in this world. The "Holy Fool" is often abused.

One of my favourite “Holy Fools” is Nasrudin. “The Exploits of the Incomparable Mulla Nasrudin” by the Sufi Mystic Idries Shah, chronicles his adventures. I love Nasrudin because he is funny, but also because he possesses uncommon sense. He often uses his apparent foolishness to his advantage. Below are a couple of tales based on his wisdom...

One day Nasruddin saw a man sitting by the roadside sobbing uncontrollably.

"Why are you crying, my friend?" asked Nasruddin.

"Because all I own is in this bag" said the man, holding up a tatty little canvas bag.

"Just look. all I have are a couple of rotting pieces of fruit, some stale bread, a few rags, a bit of old rope and few coins. That's it. I don't own anything else, and I'm so miserable."

"I'm sorry to hear that," said Nasruddin, sympathetically, and he immediately grabbed the man's bag and set off running at top speed down the road.

"Oh, now I have absolutely nothing!" wailed the poor man, but he picked himself up from the ground, and began walking wearily in the direction Nasruddin had gone.

"If I can find the thief, maybe he'll take pity on me and give me my bag back," he thought to himself.

He'd walked about a mile when he saw his bag lying in the middle of the road. He ran towards it, picked it up, kissed it and shouted out, "Hurray, I've got my bag and all my belongings back. Thank you, thank you!"

"How strange." said Nasruddin, as he appeared from behind a bush. "how strange that the bag which a few minutes ago was making you cry is now making you ecstatically happy."

Nasrudin met an old friend whom he had not seen for twenty years. They sat down together in the cafe and talked over old times. “did you ever get married Nasruddin?” asked the friend.

“No I’m afraid I didn’t.”

“Why not? I’ve been married many years and I’ve never regretted it.”

“Well”, said Nasruddin, “I was always looking for the perfect woman. I wanted my wife to be beautiful, intelligent, and sensible.”

“And you never found her?”

“I thought I had, when I was twenty. Her name was Ablah.

She was beautiful, just the kind of woman I like, but I’m afraid she wasn’t very intelligent, and her language was atrocious! I was embarrassed to be with her! She certainly wasn’t the perfect woman.”

“Was she your only girlfriend?”

“No. When I was twenty-five I met a woman called Bahira. She was good looking and intelligent, but she wasn’t very sensible. She spent all my money on frivolous things, and she couldn’t even boil an egg! She wasn’t the perfect woman either.”

“Were there any more?”

“Only one. At thirty I met Haddiyah and she was truly a gift from God! She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen, and the most intelligent. What’s more she was prudent and sensible, a good cook, and a brilliant conversationalist.”

“She sounds like the perfect woman you were looking for.”

“Then why didn’t you marry her?”

“Unfortunately, she was looking for the perfect man!”

It is not always easy being the fool, holy or otherwise. Just think of the Jester in King Lear. He does not gain the King’s favour by revealing the truth about him. The King threatens to whip the fool when he refuses to tell the whole truth and the fool responds by saying that he wishes that he could lie. King Lear then replies by saying he will whip him if he does lie, to which the fool utters these  immortal words...“They want to whip me for telling the truth, you want to whip me for lying, and sometimes I’m even whipped for keeping quiet. I’d rather be anything besides a fool.”

I’m sure we’ve all felt this frustration at times. It will hurt if we tell the truth, it will hurt if we tell a lie and it will hurt if we remain silent. No it’s not always easy playing the fool, Holy or otherwise.

Below is the "Holy Fool" scene from the opera "Boris Godunov"

So much of what Jesus is purported to have said is cloaked in mystery. To most logically minded people it may not even make sense, but what’s wrong with a bit of mystery? Mystery can often reveal deeper, hidden truths. He said: lend money but don’t expect to get it back; love your enemies; that the poor are blessed by God; that the person who gave the least, actually gave the most; that you should invite strangers to your party; that the tiniest seeds grow into the biggest plants. Yes Jesus was the King of paradox, he spoke in riddles. His sayings shocked and surprised those who heard them, because they reversed the order of the day. I suspect that Jeremy Paxman would have struggled with him. He answered questions with questions or with a story which on the surface does not necessarily make sense. The point is that he was trying to make the questioner think for themselves. He mocked religious piousness and hypocrisy. Long before the story of the emperor’s new clothes he pointed out who was dressed and who was undressed. He definitely displayed uncommon sense.

When I say life is too serious to be taken too seriously I am not being flippant and I am not denying the harsh realities of life. I am very aware of them. In the examples I have shared and many others, the life of the holy fool is far from easy, they are all hurt and abused at one time or another. Things are constantly going wrong, they are made to look foolish and are often embarrassed. There is a great deal of humour in the stories, but they are by no means a barrel of laughs.

We need the “Holy Fools”, on so many levels. We need humour, we need laughter, we need someone to point out when the king is in the all together. We need someone to reveal that uncommon sense that is so easy to miss.

On Palm Sunday Jesus was mocking the triumphant entry of the victorious Roman emperors and the people knew this. The Roman’s had conquered the entire known world of that day. They imposed their rule of law over the Jewish people and their religious leaders simply went along with it, deep down the people knew this. Jesus broke through their denial. His entry was a protest, but one filled with humour, a bit like a modern day flash mob I suppose. He was criticising what he saw as the hypocrisy of the time, but he did it with love. He was not simply mocking people for the sake of it and poking fun at the defenceless in some crude or crass manner. He was motivated by pure love and I think that this is the real key to the power of his message.

Humour is a vital tool for pointing the truth out to someone. Why? Because sometimes pointing out the direct truth can be too painful. The truth can sometimes be too unpalatable, so we need to wash it down with a spoon full of sugar or a good dose of humour. Jesus and others like him were great teachers because of how they revealed these uncommon truths that most folks wouldn’t or couldn’t face up to. They did not merely present facts or rules, they told stories, made jokes or gave us some unforgettable examples. By conveying a tiny mustard seed of truth, a great truth eventually sprouted and grew and thus uncommon sense truly did flower into common sense.

I think this is the message of Palm Sunday and April Fool’s Day; this seeking of the uncommon, unobvious sense; this looking for the truth that is not easily found. The Buddhists teach that the beautiful lotus flower grows in the most unexpected of places, in the muck. Well maybe it’s the same with all of life, maybe this is the ultimate joke. Maybe this is what we all fail to see and maybe just maybe it takes a holy fool to point this out to us.

Maybe the problem is that we’ve spent too long seeking after common sense when in reality the truth is only revealed through un-commonsense?

Maybe that commonwealth of love is already here amongst us we just have not yet got eyes that can see it or ears that can hear it?